In "Siri Disciplines," Lawrence argues that speech technologies like Siri operate in a disciplinary mode - they force nonstandard speakers of English to assimilate, and they exclude any speech practices to don't fit the narrow conception of what counts as "understandable." We could extend this critique to other technologies as well, even the keyboards we use discipline us and shape the way we write and think.
What approaches to design might help us create technologies that avoid this disciplinary mode? How might we create technologies that aren't rooted in discipline and exclusion? If technologies like Siri discipline, are there ways we might redesign them? Or we could even think beyond particular technologies: Are there general approaches to design that could result in technologies that do not force users to assimilate? Lawrence provides one possible answer to this question when she says that developers "on the periphery" are most likely to offer a way out of this bind. Where else might we look, and what approaches could show the most promise?
